Memoirs - Page 14
Political and social change was a feature of the 1921-30 decade and a period when Stanley Melbourne BRUCE took over the Prime Ministerial role from the "Little Digger", Billy HUGHES. He (Bruce) later became the only Prime Minister (in 26 to the end of the year 2000) to lose his seat in Parliament whilst still in office. By 1928 Australians owned 500,000 cars; 400,000 telephones and 300,000 radios (the Dwyers' first didn't arrive until the late 30's/ early 40's) and the population had increased by 20% much of the rise being due to the arrival to our shores of some 300,000 immigrants. By 1924 Qantas and Woolworths had arrived - the former posting its first profit result - and work was under way on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the "Provisional" Parliament House, in Canberra (opened in May, 1927). Phar Lap and the boy wonder - Bradman - were the names on the lips of those of us attracted to sport and Government and Unions' relationships were precarious with the number of unemployed reaching a quarter of a million in Sydney alone. The Great Depression (following the Stock Market crash of 1929) was looming large.
The thirties (1931 - 40) decade saw the rise of such political legends as Curtin, Chifley and Menzies in whose company the Dwyers (and particularly William Charles' arrival in February 1934) paled - though Mum had, apparently, cherished a hope (sometimes actually expressing it publicly) that her infant son would one day become PM and "go to Canberra". Well, she was - in the event - 50% correct! Joe LYONS, however, reigned as PM for most of the decade in which the careers and deeds of Bradman, Phar Lap, Lindrum (billiards) and Crawford (tennis) attracted world notice. Between 1930 and 1932 more people left than migrated to Australia and, by 1933, an estimated quarter of the workforce was unemployed. In March 1932 the Bridge was opened (despite the infamous de GROOT'S cutting of the ribbon ahead of the hated/loved NSW Premier Jack LANG) and still survives, though Premier Lang didn't as he was dismissed two months later by the NSW State Governor (an early "take" of KERR/WHITLAM in 1975?). The infamous cricket "bodyline" controversy, however, caught most of the public interest - Premiers, Governors and Politicians come and go!! By 1936 Adolph HITLER emerged as a force in Europe and King EDWARD had abdicated, in favour of his weaker brother GEORGE VI, to marry divorcee Mrs. Wallis SIMPSON. Later in the decade the long held dream of an "All Australian" car was reaching fulfillment with the merger of General Motors (U.S.) and the Holden Body Works (Adelaide) and moves were also afoot to establish the Australian Motorists Petrol Company (to become AMPOL in due course). This decade saw the emergence of a new phenomenon, newsreels, in the movie industry - Cinesound and Movietone - which Australians took to avidly. And of course, towards the end (September 1939), the then P.M. Robert Gordon MENZIES officially announced that Australia would support England in its declaration of war on the Germans and World War II was upon us.
The decade 1941 - 1950 saw the European war continuing with mixed outcomes for Australia's forces and the Pacific war with Japan commenced early in December 1941. In 1942, Japanese midget-subs entered and shelled Sydney Harbour and their planes bombed Darwin several times. In 1944 an outbreak by Japanese POW's from a detention camp near Cowra (nowadays the site of a Peace Garden) saw 232 of them killed. The atomic bombs dropped on HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI (JAPAN) in 1945 hastened the end of the war which took 35 million lives (10 million in concentration camps). John CURTIN, P.M. for most of the term of that war, died just a month before it ended, and was succeeded by Ben CHIFLEY. He was a champion of nationalization but, though he was successful with the airlines (TAA and Qantas), he did not achieve the same outcome with the banks. Although a Labor man he ordered the army in to attempt to resolve strikes in the NSW coalfields and, of course, "offended" the UNIONS and militant Laborites. Before he and his Government were cast out of office, he saw the first Holden car off the assembly line and was instrumental in commissioning work on the massive Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electricity Scheme. He was to die suddenly, in Canberra, in 1951 (though not, then, still Prime Minister).